ABSTRACT
In the beginning, there were libraries. When I first began to practice safety and health in the mid-1960s, public, university, or company libraries seldom collected works that dealt specifically with the fields of safety and industrial hygiene, due to the fact that their general interest was low and the breadth and range of publications was so small that shelf space was seldom allocated to these orphan sciences. At best, they were located in the areas of major science such as engineering, chemistry, and physics, or in small, personal collections, held closely and dearly by practitioners. The primary references were available only to the educated few. Some of these classics included, but were not limited to,
Industrial Dust
(1936),
The Chemistry of Industrial Toxicology
(1950),
Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology
(1958),
The Diseases of Occupations
(1962),
Fundamentals of Industrial Hygiene
(1971),
The Accident Prevention Manual for Industrial Operations
(1974),
among a few other dusty volumes. With the creation of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Adminis-
tration (OSHA) in 1970,
a virtual explosion of commercial publications began to appear on a wide array of industrial-safety and health topics. Governmental publications began spewing out of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), covering most of the chemicals and physical agents regulated by OSHA. The NIOSH “criteria” documents became the accepted authoritative reference for safety and health professionals, covering the approximately 400 industrial toxicants regulated under permissible exposure limits for hazardous materials under OSHA.
